Anki team has think out of the box to create such brilliant game. Virtual + reality. Really brilliant on that part. Yes, I agree having a car racing game is an AI but isn't all racing car games an AI too? To have the Anki car goes according to what the phone request to do, there has to be a map for the reality and the virtual, both gotta be the same scale and distance, that is what Anki did. In a virtual car games like Mario Kart it is just purely virtual games. In the virtual games, there must be an algorithm or AI to instruct all the other Cars to go left, right, shooting and car crashing when hit any obstacle. For Anki, the phone or the tablet does all the processing where the cars should move of cars, the proximity of each cars where the car in front of u will slow u down. With the Anki cars continuoaly sending road map location back to phone/tablet for processing. The phone/tablet send instructions to the car to where to go, to turn left/right, faster and slower that mimic the virtual map location to the reality map. What appears in the virtual game will be the same as the reality. In virtual game you shoot a car in front of you, smartphone/tablet will send instructions to Anki car for execution. To a layman, it seems like the car has a mind of its own and runs by itself, not the processing of the smartphone/tablet. In fact, the car mimic what happen in the virtual racing game on the smartphone/tablet. Summary, about the game itself nothing fantastic as all Gameloft racing car games are far more complicated track far more AI. But what Anki team has done was, they think out of the box and created a virtual +reality game which is impressive which nobody has ever done before.

More processing in the car would both inhibit development and increase battery drain, and probably reduce performance as well. It looks like they have the mix down quite well right now.

And I think how much advanced this thing is over those slotcars, except that they had way more power.

Differential drive steering requires feedback from some source, so they had to put tracks on the pad. But that also leaves the path clear for a lot more sophisticated programming as far as paths go, and also allows a means of avoiding collisions. Those kids who like to smash and crash toys like this fuly deserve to be frustrated and to have the toys totally destruct on the first intentional crash. And since it is constantly detecting it's position, it should be able to shut down if it runs off the pad, which is good for not getting lost.

Probably any change to the front wheels friction would alter the handling a bit. My guess is that those front wheels slide easily but also roll easily.

Interesting, clever steering, and that would explain the apparent unequal front to rear weight ratio I sensed and wondered about right away. I wonder if it wouldn't be a racing advantage to have the rear wheels clean, but the front ones dirty?

I wonder how it will handle crashes. What kid doesn't want to crash at the highest speed possible, over and over?! Or make this a demo derby or push-off-the-mat race?

Wondering too why it needs position speed data from the mat. Will it run when off the mat?

This is great. I still think they could have done more processing on the car, but that's just me. We used to have slot cars of various sizes. Customization was always fun. We would put more powerful motors, better, wider, stickier tires, etc. I expect you could do a lot with these as well. I like that they use light to help control the cars.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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